[tex-live] MetaPost mfplain in Debian distro

[Karl Berry]

Hi Steve,

    As Matijs points out, there are no ".mem" files whatever in the
    distro, so all the -mem and "&" methods for loading them fail.
    (Maybe this is a packaging problem?)

I couldn't say.  This is the vanilla TeX Live list, Debian-specific
issues need to be reported to Debian.

    What can I do to get the functionality of mfplain?

mfplain is meant to be dumped as a mem, not read as a straight file.
Therefore:

$ mpost -ini mfplain dump

And then

$ mpost \&./mfplain yourfile.mf

I don't recall why mfplain isn't directly in TL any more, or if it ever
was.  Maybe we thought no one used it?  Yours is the first report I've
ever seen about it :).  Seems like it should be easy enough to (re)add,
in any case.

Best,
Karl